Selection
of preferred choices (often in secret, called a secret ballot),

Secure collection of ballots for unbiased counting, and

Proclamation of the will of the voters as the will of the
people for their government.

Reasons for voting

In a democracy, voting commonly
implies election, i.e.
a way for an electorate to select among
candidates for office. In politics voting is the method
by which the electorate of a democracy appoints representatives in
its government.

A vote, is an individual's act of voting, by
which he or she express support or preference for a certain
motion (e.g. a proposed resolution), a certain candidate, or a
certain selection of candidates. A secret
ballot, the standard way to protect voters' political
privacy, generally takes place at a polling
station. The act of voting in most countries is voluntary,
however some countries, such as Australia,
Belgium and
Brazil, have
compulsory
voting systems.

Types of votes

Different voting
systems use different types of vote. Suppose that the options
in some election are Alice, Bob, Charlie, Daniel, and Emily and
they are all vying for the same position.

In a voting system that uses a single vote, the
voter can select one of the five that they most approve of.
"First
past the post" uses single votes. So, a voter might vote for
Charlie. This precludes him voting for anyone else.

An improvement on the single vote system is to
have run-off elections,
or repeat first past the post, however, the winner must win by 50%
plus one, called a simple majority. If subsequent votes must be
used, often a candidate, the one with the fewest votes or anyone
who wants to move their support to another candidate, is removed
from the ballot.

In a voting system that uses a multiple vote, the
voter can vote for any subset of the alternatives. So, a voter
might vote for Alice, Bob, and Charlie, rejecting Daniel and Emily.
Approval
voting uses such multiple votes.

In a voting system that uses a ranked vote, the
voter has to rank the alternatives in order of preference. For
example, they might vote for Bob in first place, then Emily, then
Alice, then Daniel, and finally Charlie. Many voting systems use
ranked votes.

In a voting system that uses a scored vote (or
range vote), the voter gives each alternative a number between one
and ten (the upper and lower bounds may vary). See range
voting.

Some "multiple-winner" systems may have a single
vote or one vote per elector per available position. In such a case
the elector could might vote for Bob and Charlie on a ballot with
two votes. However, if James and Jiggles each receive the most
votes (1st and 2nd place plurality), then Jiggles and James would
obtain the seats. These types of systems can use ranked or unranked
voting, and are often used for at-large positions
such as on some city councils.

Casting a vote expresses an implied willingness
to participate in a common process with some shared outcome. Those
who feel unable to express their limits or boundaries of tolerance
in a voting system may be more likely to resist or fight or fail to
support decisions made through it (more of an issue with parties
or policies). Those who feel unable to express their real
preferences may lack all enthusiasm for the choices or for the
eventually chosen representative or leader. Any vote balances
both kinds of considerations.

One common issue, especially in
first-past-the-post systems, is that of the protest
vote: one might "waste one's vote" on a minor party to send a
signal of strong preference for a candidate or party that cannot
win, or of intolerance for the "more mainstream" options. However
it is difficult to tell from the vote alone whether one is
positively inclined to the minor party or negatively inclined to
the major party. Previously Russia offered its electors a "None of
the Above" option, so that protest votes could be properly
tallied. Other jurisdictions may record the incidence of
(apparently deliberately) spoiled
ballot papers.

Also, it is often not clear whether the voter
really understands how his or her vote is counted in the voting
system, especially with the more complex types. This often leads to
issues with the results. Ballot
design and the use of voting
machines have particular importance, given this issue.
Optimally participants in a vote should perceive the results,
especially of a political vote, as fair. If fairness appears
lacking, resistance to the results may lead at best to confusion,
at worst to violence
and even civil war, in
the case of political rivals.

In an effort to make balloting cheaper and more
transparent, Brazil introduced
electronic
voting in all levels of elections, gradually since 1994. By
2002 general elections, all voting in Brazil was cast on electronic
system, with paper ballots being used only in last case emergencies
(such as black-outs). Argentina
followed in 2003 for a gubernatorial election. This pilot test
involved 500,000 voters distributed among 20 constituencies in the
eastern Argentine province of Buenos
Aires. However, concerns over the security of
paperless voting machines have caused controversy, particularly
in the United States.

Criteria. It may be premature to choose the best
method of voting without deciding the criteria by which the methods
are to be judged. The criterion most commonly accepted is that the
method should choose the candidate or policy that would defeat all
others in a series of individual contests. This is what our usual
balloting system does, looking only at the voter’s positive
choices. Pairwise comparisons is a good implementation of that
aim.

Maybe that should not be the sole criterion,
however. Another possible goal would be to protect minorities from
what has been called the “militant majority.” A town meeting is one
implementation of democracy that often does this. Such a meeting
would probably not choose the initially most popular candidate if
that candidate was totally unacceptable to a significant minority.
A candidate would probably be chosen who had slightly fewer
supporters but many fewer enemies. A blackball or veto provision
also protects minority rights, though at great cost to majority
rule.

It may be desirable then that an ideal voting
system should consider who people oppose as well as who they
support. These are not mirror images of each other. The decision
makers have latitudes of acceptance, indifference, and rejection,
and these may differ in their widths. Many alternatives may fall in
the latitude of indifference - they are neither accepted nor
rejected. Avoiding the choice that the most people strongly reject
may sometimes be at least as important as choosing the one that
they most favor.

Voting and Information

Modern political science has
questioned whether averagecitizens have sufficient
political
information to cast meaningful votes. A series of studies
coming out of the University
of Michigan in the 1950s and 1960s argued that voters lack a
basic understanding of current issues, the liberal-conservativeideological
dimension, and the relative ideological positions of the major
parties.
Only a handful of sophisticated voters—usually those with education
and high levels of political involvement—seemed to understand
political debates fully.

Though these studies arose from research in the
United States, their implications for democracy are severe.
However, these conclusions continue to be contested as current
scholarly research debates the Michigan studies' findings. A
consensus has begun to emerge that voters do not need the high
levels of political information that the Michigan studies expected
to find in order to participate fully in politics; instead, voters
learn to rely on "information shortcuts"—for example, they look at
which politicians and interest
groups endorse each side of a proposal to get a feel for
whether they ought to support it.